Sounding the Teaching III: Facilitating Music Learning with Music Tec Sounding The Teaching III | Page 14

SOUNDING THE TEACHING III /
EXPOSITION
12
Investigating Students’ Decision-making
Processes in Musical Arrangements on
Digital Audio Workstations
Ho Tze Liang,
Shaun
Subject Head
(Aesthetics)
Yishun
Secondary School
INTRODUCTION
My critical inquiry aims to investigate
students’ decision-making processes as
they work on musical arrangements
on Digital Audio Workstations (DAWs).
GarageBand was the DAW that I used.
The inspiration behind my project was
Byrne’s (2018) research on “learning
narratives” in computer compositional
strategies. “Learning narratives” refer to
students’ unseen perspective during the
compositional process. In her research, she
worked with secondary school pupils who
were composing using computers. To collect
data, she used Camtasia, a screen-recording
software, which captured students’ actions
when they were composing on the computer.
Her analysis brought to light how students
learn, which sometimes takes place in
silence and is invisible to the teacher.
RATIONALE
In Yishun Secondary School, we offer Music
for Upper Secondary Normal Technical (NT)
students as one of their subjects for their
‘N’ Level examinations. As part of their
coursework, the students have to create
musical arrangements of pop songs based
on a given context. Having guided students
through their coursework multiple times,
I was intrigued by the unseen process by
which students make musical decisions
during the creation of music, and what really
goes on after the teacher gives feedback
and leaves the student to work. Sometimes
feedback such as “work on the riff in the
bassline” could result in an incongruous
and/or unexpected outcome where the
student creates chords in the bass guitar
or creates conflicting bass notes that do
not align with the music. Hence, I chose my
Secondary 3 NT music class for this project.
CONTEXTS
Overview of Lessons
The project was carried out across 10 lessons
or approximately 2 months. There are
2 lessons per week, each 90 minutes long.
Task
Students create their own instrumental
arrangement of a 4-chord song using
GarageBand. It is a song with a consistent
harmonic rhythm over 4 chords.
Why this task?
• Music arrangement is part of coursework
in the NT Music syllabus.
•
•
Students tend to struggle with this
component.
The purpose is to find out how students
make musical decisions when creating
their arrangement.
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FACILITATING MUSIC LEARNING WITH DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY
Schedule
LESSON 1
LESSON 2
Introduce song
Construct chords
and bass notes
Create bassline with
appropriate pattern s
LESSON 3-4 Create drum patterns
LESSON 5-6 Create drum patterns and fills
LESSON 7 Create drum fills and pads
LESSON 8-9 Explore pads, intro/outro
LESSON 10 Balance
• One student has special educational
needs and needs more time to complete
class work and tests.
• Two students have irregular attendance
which affects their motivation and
continuity of learning.
Resources
A few resources were given to the students
to aid their work.
a. The first was a teacher’s arrangement,
so that students could refer to the song
anytime. The four layers of melody,
harmony, bass and rhythm were included
in this arrangement. Two layers of
harmony were included to demonstrate
that different instruments, patterns and
chord structures would lead to a different
arrangement.
EXPOSITION
Fig 1: Screenshot of
teacher’s arrangement
Instrumentation:
Melody (without lyrics)
– Soft Square Lead
Synthesizer
Harmony 1 – Jazz Organ
Harmony 2 – Classic
Suitcase Mk IV Keyboard
Bass – Picked Bass
Guitar
Rhythm – SoCal (Kyle)
Smart Drums
NOTE:
Students began with the bassline as it only
required them to sequence single notes. The
sequencing of drum patterns and fills took
a longer duration as the students had to
construct the drum parts without using the
smart drum function in GarageBand.
Student Profile
There are six students in the Sec 3 NT
music class.
• Three play the guitar but have no or
minimal experience with GarageBand
on iMacs.
•
Three play the keyboard and have tried
recording into GarageBand on iMacs
and are familiar with the interface and
recording functions.
• All are kinesthetic and visual learners
and have short attention spans.
• All have used GarageBand on iPads in
Sec 2 during their iPad Band module.
b. The second resource was a lead sheet.
The students know how to read chords
to create their arrangement.
c. The third resource was a worksheet of
empty keyboard charts. The purpose
was twofold:
• To familiarise students with the
keyboard if they do not already know
the keyboard.
•
To help students remember the
notes of the different chords. The
students would shade the respective
notes of the chords in the diagrams.
Click or scan
QR code to listen
to the teacher’s
arrangement